Central West LLC general manager Laurie Dwyer

NSW’s Local Land Services will focus on improving its level of reporting and assessment of customer satisfaction with performance, the body’s chair said today.

Chair of the Local Land Services Board of Chairs, John Macarthur-Stanham, said reasonable progress has been made towards building a strong platform for providing services.

“There is great strength in regional input and decision-making and having local people involved at the grass-roots has been vital to starting to deliver on-ground results,”

“While there have been significant results delivered in 2014, in the future we will be focusing on improving the level of reporting being undertaken and assessing customer satisfaction with our performance,” he said.

The key LLS achievements during 2014 are outlined in a publication released this week.

LLS livestock, land and bio-security achievements

Across the state, the organisation’s achievements include:

• community representatives elected onto Local Land Services boards
• 812 staff on hand to help local communities throughout NSW
• 2389 general consultations by vets and biosecurity officers
• 335 saleyard inspections conducted
• 444 livestock export certificates issued
• 1884 properties involved in the wild dog spring offensive
• over 240,000 baits used via 765,000 hectares of ground baiting and 4440 km of aerial bait lines
• 12,072 participants (in person days) at training events
• 457,702 hectares protected through 621 voluntary conservation agreements
• 1785 hectares of riverbank vegetation protected by fencing
• 27 organisations combined into one.

Local Land Services was established to provide integrated and coordinated services to landholders and the community to improve biosecurity, agricultural production, emergency management and natural resource management.

Local Land Services brought together catchment management authorities, livestock health and pest Authorities and agriculture advisory services of the Department of Primary Industries into a new regional service delivery model for farmers. Funded comes from the NSW Government, ratepayer funds and a continuation of natural resource grant funding from the NSW and Australian Government.

LLS provides integrated locally prioritised agricultural, plant and animal pest control, biosecurity, natural resource management, and emergency and disaster assessment and response services.

LLS branches are regionally-based, semi-autonomous organisations governed by a skills-based Board comprising ratepayer elected and government appointed members.

Each Local Land Services board develops local strategic plans to prioritise service delivery reflecting regional priorities. These are independently audited to ensure accountability and delivery against priorities.

Publication outlines LLS community services

Central West Local Land Services general manager, Laurie Dwyer, said while building a new organisation is never straight forward, he is very proud of what his board and staff have achieved over the last 12 months.

“We have worked to not only continue the services of our legacy organisation, but also build strong professional relationships and deliver new ways of servicing our communities.

“The publication looks at a number of examples of where we have done this. I encourage you to have a look.”

“I look forward to working with the community and build on these achievements over the coming 12 months.”

To read the publication and find out what Local Land Services has achieved in 2014, visit http://www.lls.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/541963/lls-achievements-report-2014.pdf

Source: Local Land Services.